Homemade PESTO From Home Grown BASIL

Homemade PESTO From Home Grown BASIL

I so enjoy basil season! Harvesting this fragrant herb will send  glorious clouds of aroma into your neighbor's backyards.
If you are not familiar with pesto - it's kind of like a basil spread.  The traditional Italian pesto includes pine nuts but due to the extremely high price of this nut I have substituted that for walnuts (I actually prefer walnuts to pine nuts).
I freeze the many batches of pesto that I make each summer.  NOTE - I do NOT add the garlic until actually making a recipe (I do NOT freeze the pest with garlic included - the garlic becomes overpowering when frozen).
I use pesto to make Pesto Garlic Bread or Pesto Pasta - both are keeper recipes. 



Printable Recipe

PESTO Recipe

8 cups basil leaves

1 1/2 cups grated parmesan cheese

1 cup walnuts

4 tablespoons olive oil

Harvest your basil.  Pick off only the choicest of leaves (if the leaf is half eaten then I compost it - I don't want to be eating bug saliva - lol).  Rinse & drain these choice leaves (see picture above).  Make sure that you get all the garden grit off the leaves (there's nothing worse than biting into sand/dirt).

In a food processor, add all ingredients (see picture below).

Pulse or process according to your Food Processor manual until the pesto resembles the picture below.

I fill glass ramekins with 3/4 to 1 cup pesto (packing it down tightly into the ramekin) (see picture below).  Continue filling as many ramekins as you have pest.  Cover each ramekin (I have a fitted lid - you might want to use a canning jar if your ramekins do not have fitted lids).  Freeze the pesto filled ramekins.  Once they are fully frozen I pop the pesto out of the ramekin and then transfer the "pesto puck" to a ziplock baggie (or I use my vaccuum packer).  Freeze until winter and enjoy a bit of August in February!  Or use the pesto now to make one of the recipes at the end of this post.

Garlic Pesto Bread

1 loaf Italian bread

1 cup of pesto (or 1 thawed pesto puck)

1 to 2 garlic cloves (remove the skin)

Foil (large piece)

Process the garlic using a garlic press and stir this into the thawed pesto.  Cut the Italian bread in half lengthwise (see picture below)

Spread the pesto on the inner bottom part of the bread and spread butter on the inner top portion of the bread (see picture below)



Place each half of the bread on the foil - (you can either do open faced for crispier bread or place the two pieces together and wrap the foil around the bread).
Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes or until desired color or doneness is achieved.



Slice & ENJOY!

Pesto Pasta

1/2 package of bow tie pasta

1 cup of pesto (or 1 thawed pesto puck)

1 garlic clove (remove the skin)

Follow the directions on the package and cook the pasta to "al dente".  Drain and immediately add the totally thawed pesto onto the hot pasta.  Quickly stir until the pasta is covered (you might need to add a little butter or olive oil to make the pesto evenly dispersed).

Serve while hot & ENJOY!

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